The Barbarian Status of Women
by Thorstein Veblen
American Journal of Sociology
vol. 4, (1898-9)
It seems altogether probable that in the primitive groups of
mankind, when the race first took to a systematic use of tools
and so emerged upon the properly human plane of life, there was
but the very slightest beginning of a system of status, with
little of invidious distinction between classes and little of a
corresponding division of employments. In an earlier paper,
published in this JOURNAL,(1*) it has been argued that the early
division of labor between classes comes in as the result of an
increasing efficiency of labor, due to a growing effectiveness in
the use of tools. When, in the early cultural development, the
use of tools and the technical command of material forces had
reached a certain degree of effectiveness, the employments which
occupy the primitive community would fall into two distinct
groups - (a) the honorific employments, which involve a large
element of prowess, and (b) the humiliating employments, which
call for diligence and into which the sturdier virtues do not
enter. An appreciable advance in the use of tools must precede
this differentiation of employments, because (1) without
effective tools (including weapons) men are not sufficiently
formidable in conflict with the ferocious beasts to devote
themselves so exclusively to the hunting of large game as to
develop that occupation into a conventional mode of life reserved
for a distinct class; (2) without tools of some efficiency,
industry is not productive enough to support a dense population,
and therefore the groups into which the population gathers will
not come into such a habitual hostile contact with one another as
would give rise to a life of warlike prowess; (3) until
industrial methods and knowledge have made some advance, the work
of getting a livelihood is too exacting to admit of the
consistent exemption of any portion of the community from vulgar
labor; (4) the inefficient primitive industry yields no such
disposable surplus of accumulated goods as would be worth
fighting for, or would tempt an intruder, and therefore there is
little provocation to warlike prowess.
With the growth of industry comes the possibility of a
predatory life; and if the groups of savages crowd one another in
the struggle for subsistence, there is a provocation to
hostilities, and a predatory habit of life ensues. There is a
consequent growth of a predatory culture, which may for the
present purpose be treated as the beginning of the barbarian
culture. This predatory culture shows itself in a growth of
suitable institutions. The group divides itself conventionally
into a fighting and a peace-keeping class, with a corresponding
division of labor. Fighting, together with other work that
involves a serious element of exploit, becomes the employment of
the able-bodied men; the uneventful everyday work of the group
falls to the women and the infirm.
In such a community the standards of merit and propriety rest
on an invidious distinction between those who are capable
fighters and those who are not. Infirmity, that is to say
incapacity for exploit, is looked down upon. One of the early
consequences of this deprecation of infirmity is a tabu on women
and on women's employments. In the apprehension of the archaic,
animistic barbarian, infirmity is infectious. The infection may
work its mischievous effect both by sympathetic influence and by
transfusion. Therefore it is well for the able-bodied man who is
mindful of his virility to shun all undue contact and
conversation with the weaker sex and to avoid all contamination
with the employments that are characteristic of the sex. Even the
habitual food of women should not be eaten by men, lest their
force be thereby impaired. The injunction against womanly
employments and foods and against intercourse with women applies
with especial rigor during the season of preparation for any work
of manly exploit, such as a great hunt or a warlike raid, or
induction into some manly dignity or society or mystery.
Illustrations of this seasonal tabu abound in the early history
of all peoples that have had a warlike or barbarian past. The
women, their occupations, their food and clothing, their habitual
place in the house or village, and in extreme cases even their
speech, become ceremonially unclean to the men. This imputation
of ceremonial uncleanness on the ground of their infirmity has
lasted on in the later culture as a sense of the unworthiness or
levitical inadequacy of women; so that even now we feel the
impropriety of women taking rank with men, or representing the
community in any relation that calls for dignity and ritual
competency,. as for instance, in priestly or diplomatic offices,
or even in representative civil offices, and likewise, and for a
like reason, in such offices of domestic and body servants as are
of a seriously ceremonial character - footmen, butlers, etc.
The changes that take place in the everyday experiences of a
group or horde when it passes from a peaceable to a predatory
habit of life have their effect on the habits of thought
prevalent in the group. As the hostile contact of one group with
another becomes closer and more habitual, the predatory activity
and the bellicose animus become more habitual to the members of
the group. Fighting comes more and more to occupy men's everyday
thoughts, and the other activities of the group fall into the
background and become subsidiary to the fighting activity. In the
popular apprehension the substantial core of such a group - that
on which men's thoughts run when the community and the
community's life is thought of - is the body of fighting men. The
collective fighting capacity becomes the most serious question
that occupies men's minds, and gives the point of view from which
persons and conduct are rated. The scheme of life of such a group
is substantially a scheme of exploit. There is much of this point
of view to be found even in the common-sense views held by modern
populations. The inclination to identify the community with its
fighting men comes into evidence today whenever warlike interests
occupy the popular attention in an appreciable degree.
The work of the predatory barbarian group is gradually
specialized and differentiated under the dominance of this ideal
of prowess, so as to give rise to a system of status in which the
non-fighters fall into a position of subservience to the
fighters. The accepted scheme of life or consensus of opinions
which guides the conduct of men in such a predatory group and
decides what may properly be done, of course comprises a great
variety of details; but it is, after all, a single scheme - a
more or less organic whole so that the life carried on under its
guidance in any case makes up a somewhat consistent and
characteristic body of culture. This is necessarily the case,
because of the simple fact that the individuals between whom the
consensus holds are individuals. The thinking of each one is the
thinking of the same individual, on whatever head and in whatever
direction his thinking may run. Whatever may be the immediate
point or object of his thinking, the frame of mind which governs
his aim and manner of reasoning in passing on any given point of
conduct is, on the whole, the habitual frame of mind which
experience and tradition have enforced upon him. Individuals
whose sense of what is right and good departs widely from the
accepted views suffer some repression, and in case of an extreme
divergence they are eliminated from the effective life of the
group through ostracism. Where the fighting class is in the
position of dominance and prescriptive legitimacy, the canons of
conduct are shaped chiefly by the common sense of the body of
fighting men. Whatever conduct and whatever code of proprieties
has the authentication of this common sense is definitively right
and good, for the time being. and the deliverances of this common
sense are, in their turn, shaped by the habits of life of the
able-bodied men. Habitual conflict acts, by selection and by
habituation, to make these male members tolerant of any
infliction of damage and suffering. Habituation to the sight and
infliction of suffering, and to the emotions that go with fights
and brawls, may even end in making the spectacle of misery a
pleasing diversion to them. The result is in any case a more or
less consistent attitude of plundering and coercion on the part
of the fighting body, and this animus is incorporated into the
scheme of life of the community. The discipline of predatory life
makes for an attitude of mastery on the part of the able-bodied
men in all their relations with the weaker members of the group,
and especially in their relations with the women. Men who are
trained in predatory ways of life and modes of thinking come by
habituation to apprehend this form of the relation between the
sexes as good and beautiful.
All the women in the group will share in the class repression
and depreciation that belongs to them as women, but the status of
women taken from hostile groups has an additional feature. Such a
woman not only belongs to a subservient and low class, but she
also stands in a special relation to her captor. She is a trophy
of the raid, and therefore an evidence of exploit, and on this
ground it is to her captor's interest to maintain a peculiarly
obvious relation of mastery toward her. And since, in the early
culture, it does not detract from her subservience to the life of
the group, this peculiar relation of the captive to her captor
will meet but slight, if any, objection from the other members of
the group. At the same time, since his peculiar coercive relation
to the woman serves to mark her as a trophy of his exploit, he
will somewhat jealously resent any similar freedom taken by other
men, or any attempt on their part to parade a similar coercive
authority over her, and so usurp the laurels of his prowess, very
much as a warrior would under like circumstances resent a
usurpation or an abuse of the scalps or skulls which he had taken
from the enemy.
After the habit of appropriating captured women has hardened
into custom, and so given rise on the one hand to a form of
marriage resting on coercion, and on the other hand to a concept
of ownership,(2*) a development of certain secondary features of
the institution so inaugurated is to be looked for. In time this
coercive ownership-marriage receives the sanction of the popular
taste and morality. It comes to rest in men's habits of thought
as the right form of marriage relation, and it comes at the same
time to be gratifying to men's sense of beauty and of honor. The
growing predilection for mastery and coercion, as a manly trait,
together with the growing moral and aesthetic approbation of
marriage on a basis of coercion and ownership, will affect the
tastes of the men most immediately and most strongly; but since
the men are the superior class, whose views determine the current
views of the community, their common sense in the matter will
shape the current canons of taste in its own image. The tastes of
the women also, in point of morality and of propriety alike, will
presently be affected in the same way. Through the precept and
example of those who make the vogue, and through selective
repression of those who are unable to accept it, the institution
of ownership-marriage makes its way into definitive acceptance as
the only beautiful and virtuous form of the relation. As the
conviction of its legitimacy grows stronger in each succeeding
generation, it comes to be appreciated unreflectingly as a
deliverance of common sense and enlightened reason that the good
and beautiful attitude of the man toward the woman is an attitude
of coercion. "None but the brave deserve the fair."
As the predatory habit of life gains a more unquestioned and
undivided sway, other forms of the marriage relation fall under a
polite odium. The masterless, unattached woman consequently loses
caste. It becomes imperative for all men who would stand well in
the eyes of their fellows to attach some woman or women to
themselves by the honorable bonds of seizure. In order to a
decent standing in the community a man is required to enter into
this virtuous and honorific relation of ownership-marriage, and a
publicly acknowledged marriage relation which has not the
sanction of capture becomes unworthy of able-bodied men. But as
the group increases in size, the difficulty of providing wives by
capture becomes very great, and it becomes necessary to find a
remedy that shall save the requirements of decency and at the
same time permit the marriage of women from within the group. To
this end the status of women married from within the group is
sought to be mended by a mimic or ceremonial capture. The
ceremonial capture effects an assimilation of the free woman into
the more acceptable class of women who are attached by bonds of
coercion to some master, and so gives a ceremonial legitimacy and
decency to the resulting marriage relation. The probable motive
for adopting the free women into the honorable class of bond
women in this way is not primarily a wish to improve their
standing or their lot, but rather a wish to keep those good men
in countenance who, for dearth of captives, are constrained to
seek a substitute from among the home-bred women of the group.
The inclinations of men in high standing who are possessed of
marriageable daughters would run in the same direction. It would
not seem right that a woman of high birth should irretrievably be
outclassed by any chance-comer from outside.
According to this view, marriage by feigned capture within
the tribe is a case of mimicry - "protective mimicry," to borrow
a phrase from the naturalists. It is substantially a case of
adoption. As is the case in all human relations where adoption is
practiced, this adoption of the free women into the class of the
unfree proceeds by as close an imitation as may be of the
original fact for which it is a substitute. And as in other cases
of adoption, the ceremonial performance is by no means looked
upon as a fatuous make-believe. The barbarian has implicit faith
in the efficiency of imitation and ceremonial execution as a
means of compassing a desired end. The entire range of magic and
religious rites is testimony to that effect. He looks upon
external objects and sequences naively, as organic and individual
things, and as expressions of a propensity working toward an end.
The unsophisticated common sense of the primitive barbarian
apprehends sequences and events. in terms of will-power or
inclination. As seen in the light of this animistic
preconception, any process is substantially teleological, and the
propensity imputed to it will not be thwarted of its legitimate
end after the course of events in which it expresses itself has
once fallen into shape or got under. way. It follows logically,
as a matter of course, that if once the motions leading to a
desired consummation have been rehearsed in the accredited form
and sequence, the same substantial result will be attained as
that produced by the process imitated. This is the ground of
whatever efficiency is imputed to ceremonial observances on all
planes of culture, and it is especially the chief element in
formal adoption and initiation. Hence, probably, the practice of
mock-seizure or mock-capture, and hence the formal profession of
fealty and submission on the part of the woman in the marriage
rites of peoples among whom the household with a male head
prevails. This form of the household is almost always associated
with some survival or reminiscence of wife-capture. In all such
cases, marriage is, by derivation, a ritual of initiation into
servitude. In the words of the formula, even after it has been
appreciably softened under the latter-day decay of the sense of
status, it is the woman's place to love, honor, and obey.
According to this view, the patriarchal household, or, in
other words, the household with a male head, is an outgrowth af
emulation between the members of a warlike community. It is,
therefore, in point of derivation, a predatory institution. The
ownership and control of women is a gratifying evidence of
prowess and high standing. In logical consistency, therefore, the
greater the number of women so held, the greater the distinction
which their possession confers upon their master. Hence the
prevalence of polygamy, which occurs almost universally at one
stage of culture among peoples which have the male household.
There may, of course, be other reasons for polygamy, but the
ideal development of polygamy which is met with in the harems of
very powerful patriarchal despots and chieftains can scarcely be
explained on other grounds. But whether it works out in a system
of polygamy or not, the male household is in any case a detail of
a system of status under which the women are included in the
class of unfree subjects. The dominant feature in the
institutional structure of these communities is that of status,
and the groundwork of their economic life is a rigorous system of
ownership.
The institution is found at its best, or in its most
effectual development, in the communities in which status and
ownership prevail with the least mitigation; and with the decline
of the sense of status and of the extreme pretensions of
ownership, such as has been going on for some time past in the
communities of the western culture, the institution of the
patriarchal household has also suffered something of a
disintegration. There has been some weakening and slackening of
the bonds, and this deterioration is most visible in the
communities which have departed farthest from the ancient system
of status, and have gone farthest in reorganizing their economic
life on the lines of industrial freedom. And the deference for an
indissoluble tie of ownership-marriage, as well as the sense of
its definitive virtuousness, has suffered the greatest decline
among the classes immediately engaged in the modern industries.
So that there seems to be fair ground for saying that the habits
of thought fostered by modern industrial life are, on the whole,
not favorable to the maintenance of this institution or to that
status of women which the institution in its best development
implies. The days of its best development are in the past, and
the discipline of modern life - if not supplemented by a prudent
inculcation of conservative ideals - will scarcely afford the
psychological basis for its rehabilitation.
This form of marriage, or of ownership, by which the man
becomes the head of the household, the owner of the woman, and
the owner and discretionary consumer of the household's output of
consumable goods, does not of necessity imply a patriarchal
system of consanguinity. The presence or absence of maternal
relationship should, therefore, not be given definite weight in
this connection. The male household, in some degree of
elaboration, may well coexist with a counting of relationship in
the female line, as, for instance, among many North American
tribes. But where this is the case it seems probable that the
ownership of women, together with the invidious distinctions of
status from which the practice of such an ownership springs, has
come into vogue at so late a stage of the cultural development
that the maternal system of relationship had already been
thoroughly incorporated into the tribe's scheme of life. The male
household in such cases is ordinarily not developed in good form
or entirely free from traces of a maternal household. The traces
of a maternal household which are found in these cases commonly
point to a form of marriage which disregards the man rather than
places him under the surveillance of the woman. It may well be
named the household of the unattached woman. This condition of
things argues that the tribe or race in question has entered upon
a predatory life only after a considerable period of peaceable
industrial life, and after having achieved a considerable
development of social structure under the regime of peace and
industry, whereas the unqualified prevalence of the patriarchate,
together- with the male household, may be taken to indicate that
the predatory phase was entered early, culturally speaking.
Where the patriarchal system is in force in fully developed
form, including the paternal household, and hampered with no
indubitable survivals of a maternal household or a maternal
system of relationship, the presumption would be that the people
in question has entered upon the predatory culture early, and has
adopted the institutions of private property and class
prerogative at an early stage of its economic development. On the
other hand, where there are well-preserved traces of a maternal
household, the presumption is that the predatory phase has been
entered by the community in question at a relatively late point
in its life history, even if the patriarchal system is, and long
has been, the prevalent system of relationship. In the latter
case the community, or the group of tribes, may, perhaps for
geographical reasons, not have independently attained the
predatory culture in accentuated form, but may at a relatively
late date have contracted the agnatic system and the paternal
household through contact with another, higher, or
characteristically different, culture, which has included these
institutions among its cultural furniture. The required contact
would take place most effectually by way of invasion and conquest
by an alien race occupying the higher plane or divergent line of
culture. Something of this kind is the probable explanation, for
instance, of the equivocal character of the household and
relationship system in the early Germanic culture, especially as
it is seen in such outlying regions as Scandinavia. The evidence,
in this latter case, as in some other communities lying farther
south, is somewhat obscure, but it points to a long-continued
coexistence of the two forms of the household; of which the
maternal seems to have held its place most tenaciously among the
subject or lower classes of the population, while the paternal
was the honorable form of marriage in vogue among the superior
class. In the earliest traceable situation of these tribes there
appears to have been a relatively feeble, but growing,
preponderance of the male household throughout the community.
This mixture of marriage institutions, as well as the correlative
mixture or ambiguity of property institutions associated with it
in the Germanic culture, seems most easily explicable as being
due to the mingling of two distinct racial stocks, whose
institutions differed in these respects. The race or tribe which
had the maternal household and common property would probably
have been the more numerous and the more peaceable at the time
the mixing process began, and would fall into some degree of
subjection to its more warlike consort race.
No attempt is hereby made to account for the various forms of
human marriage, or to show how the institution varies in detail
from place to place and from time to time, but only to indicate
what seems to have been the range of motives and of exigencies
that have given rise to the paternal household, as it has been
handed down from the barbarian past of the peoples of the western
culture. To this end, nothing but the most general features of
the life history of the institution have been touched upon, and
even the evidence on which this much of generalization is based
is, per force, omitted. The purpose of the argument is to point
out that there is a close connection, particularly in point of
psychological derivation, between individual ownership, the
system of status, and the paternal household, as they appear in
this culture.
This view of the derivation of private property and of the
male household, as already suggested, does not imply the prior
existence of a maternal household of the kind in which the woman
is the head and master of a household group and exercises a
discretionary control over her husband or husbands and over the
household effects. Still less does it imply a prior state of
promiscuity. What is implied by the hypothesis and by the scant
evidence at hand is rather the form of the marriage relation
above characterized as the household of the unattached woman. The
characteristic feature of this marriage seems to have been an
absence of coercion or control in the relation between the sexes.
The union (probably monogamic and more or less enduring) seems to
have been terminable at will by either party, under the
constraint of some slight conventional limitations. The
substantial difference introduced into the marriage relation on
the adoption of ownership-marriage is the exercise of coercion by
the man and the loss on the part of the woman of the power to
terminate the relation at will. Evidence running in this
direction, and in part hitherto unpublished, is to be found both
in the modern and in the earlier culture of Germanic communities.
It is only in cases where circumstances have, in an
exceptional degree, favored the development of ownership-marriage
that we should expect to find the institution worked out to its
logical consequences. Wherever the predatory phase of social life
has not come in early and has not prevailed in unqualified form
for a long time, or wherever a social group or race with this
form of the household has received a strong admixture of another
race not possessed of the institution, there the prevalent form
of marriage should show something of a departure from this
paternal type. And even where neither of these two conditions is
present, this type of the marriage relation might be expected in
the course of time to break down with the change of
circumstances, since it is an institution that has grown up as a
detail of a system of status, and, therefore, presumably fits
into such a social system, but does not fit into a system of a
different kind. It is at present visibly breaking down in modern
civilized communities, apparently because it is at variance with
the most ancient habits of thought of the race, as well as with
the exigencies of a peaceful, industrial mode of life. There may
seem some ground for holding that the same reassertion of ancient
habits of thought which is now apparently at work to disintegrate
the institution of ownership-marriage may be expected also to
work a disintegration of the correlative institution of private
property; but that is perhaps a question of speculative curiosity
rather than of urgent theoretical interest.
NOTES:
1. "The Instinct of Workmanship and the Irksomeness of Labor,"
September 1898, pp. 187-210.
2. For a more detailed discussion of this point see a paper on
"The Beginnings of Ownership" in this JOURNAL for November, 1898.